Chapter 26 #2
She reaches for him. Fingers stretching toward his face. She doesn’t see me. Her back is fully turned. Her shoulders are relaxed. Her attention is locked on Rafael. I am furniture. I am scenery. I am nothing.
And I am done.
I’ve spent weeks being told how to behave around him. Now she’s doing it too. thinking she has power over him.
She’s wrong.
She’s moving toward him, confident, arrogant. Smug. Convinced that the only thing to be concerned about is standing in front of her.
She should have looked at me.
“You’re watching the wrong wolf, bitch.”
My dormant beast finally snaps the leash. I shift.
The transformation rips through me mid-stride. My wolf comes through fast, like something locked up too long that’s run out of patience. I hit four legs before Dr. Fell finishes moving. No growl. No howl. Just paws on wet asphalt and the momentum of a body built for taking down prey.
“Faith!” Creed yells.
She turns at the last second. Her hand still reaching for Rafael. Her mouth opening.
There’s a moment of raw, uncoordinated fury, and then I hit her at full speed.
She goes down hard, skull cracking against the asphalt. Her arms flail. I have her on her back before she can scream. My jaws close over her shoulder, and I tear.
That’s when she screams.
The suit rips. The skin gives. Muscle separates.
Blood floods my mouth, hot, metallic. She tries to push me off, but her hands are soft and human, made for instruments and blades and the delicate work of carving into living flesh when it’s strapped down.
They scrabble at my fur. I shake my head.
Her shoulder dislocates with a wet pop. She screams again.
“No! Get… Get off!” she gasps.
I ignore her. My claws rake across her ribs.
She arches. Another scream. I bite again, higher, near her throat.
The skin tears in strips. Blood sprays across my muzzle, across the asphalt, across the white of her hair.
She’s still fighting. Her legs kick. One hand catches my ear and twists. The pain is distant. Irrelevant.
I snap at her face, fangs sinking in. Blood pools in the hollow of her throat. One eye is still visible, wide. Something in it that isn’t cold or calculating.
Fear.
Good.
Her voice is coming out in wet, gurgling sobs, but I’m pretty sure I hear the word “Please.”
I step off.
I shift back. Naked. Bloody. The mountain cold slams into my bare skin. I turn my head and spit, lip curling in disgust.
Dr. Fell is alive. Her chest moves in shallow, jagged gasps.
Her face is a ruin; cheek laid open, jaw visible through torn flesh, ear hanging by a thread of cartilage.
Her throat is scored with claw marks, but the arteries are untouched.
I didn’t kill her. But she’ll carry what I did for the rest of her life.
“Now you have scars too,” I tell her.
Behind me, Creed’s remaining SUVs haven’t moved. I turn.
Creed is standing beside his vehicle. Door open. Two operatives flank him. They’re watching me. They’re watching Rafael. They should. We’re both lethal.
Rafael is standing. Legs braced.
The fog is clearing from his eyes. He’s looking at the woman on the ground.
The woman who haunted his nightmares. The voice that owned him.
Lying on a wet road with her face torn open and her blood mixing with the rain.
Small. Ordinary. Without her composure, she’s just a person who hurt him for a very long time.
He stands straighter. The power holds low and steady in him. His eyes find Creed’s across the gap.
Creed looks at his surviving operatives. A traumatized dragon who can barely stand. Men dragged back half-conscious. Others who just watched a wolf tear a researcher apart. He looks at the blood on the road. He looks at Rafael.
“Take her,” I say. “And go.”
Creed jerks his head. Two operatives approach Dr. Fell. They lift her between them, eyes darting between Rafael and me. She’s conscious. Twitching. Blood soaking through what’s left of her suit. No clever words now, just gasping sobs.
They load her into the SUV. Creed gets in. Doors close.
Three vehicles. Three sets of taillights. They pull back, turn, head down the mountain. Creed doesn’t speed up. Running invites pursuit.
We have no intention of giving chase. The sooner they’re out of sight, the better.
The taillights round a curve. Disappear.
I stand on the empty road. Naked. Bloody. Wind cutting through me.
Rafael is at the van. He opens the passenger door, takes the blanket, and walks to me. He wraps it around my shoulders. His hands are steady. The claws are gone.
I look up at him. The shift is settling. The power hums low. His eyes are clear.
“She was just a person,” he says. “Under everything. Just a person.”
“Yes.”
“Weak.”
“Yes.”
I climb behind the wheel. He takes the passenger seat. The engine is still running.
I pull around the dark patch of blood on the road where Dr. Fell was lying and point the van down the mountain.
We drive in silence. The heater pushes warm air against my bare skin under the blanket. The road hums.
“You destroyed her,” he says.
“I hurt her. She’ll live.”
His hand finds mine on the console. His thumb moves against my knuckles.
“I saw it,” he says. “When you hit her. She turned. Her face…she didn’t understand. She never thought you’d do it.”
“She never thought I was a threat.”
His hand tightens on mine. A full minute before he speaks.
“You’re incredible,” he murmurs.
“I wouldn’t go that far.” I manage a small smile.
“I would,” he says. He’s silent again, then eventually, “Mine.” Quiet. Not from the wolf’s place this time. The man. “You’re my mate.”
“Yes,” I say. Eyes on the road. “I am.”
I drive until the sky turns gray and the mountains open into a valley I don’t recognize. The blood on my mouth has dried. The blanket has slipped off one shoulder. My hands are steady on the wheel.
Ahead of us: a road I’ve never driven. Behind us: everything we’ve left. The woman who’ll rebuild herself into something new when the surgeons are done with her.
She’ll come back. Different. Scarred. But she’ll come back.
But we’ll be ready.